Amex Surveying New Lucrative Points-Earning Business Checking Account

A month after announcing a new rewards checking account American Express is surveying a new business checking account that’s potentially more lucrative.

• Initial bonus: 20,000 points if you keep $5000 on deposit for 60 days and complete 10 transactions with the account within 60 days.
• Rewards for debit spend: 1 point per $2 spent. American Express managed to workaround the Durbin amendment which makes debit transactions possible with their Bluebird card, for instance. Generally rewards-earning debit went away because the federal government outlawed earning a return on debit, so it no longer made sense to pay to incentivize debit transactions.
• No monthly fees: this seems like an ante for a strong account.
• High interest: for a checking account of 1.1% APY on up to $500,000. That’s quite generous as something other than a teaser rate or with a low cap right now, though if they earn enough margin on debit that could help and of course we should be seeing interest rate hikes though I’ll leave it to others smarter than I am to be on whether those will be muted somewhat by the collapse of the world.

Here’s the promotional material being tested:

(HT: Tom)

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